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swim has poppies and likes to hse the latex, however this can be time consuming so swim wants to make a tincture instead.

swim used fresh pods to do this before and made the laudanum green and filled with plant material. swim knows laudanum is usally created from raw opium but swim wants to create it from the pods because the raw stuff is good on its own, or so swim hears.

swim has several questins.
1: what is the best way to dry fresh pods inside?
2: how cn swim get extra and unwanted plant material out of the tincture to ensure it is opium alkaloids and not much else?
3. are stronger alcohols (60-80%) better better for extracting alkaloids or increasing potency?
swim is new to tincturemaking so any advice is greatly appreciated. thanks

Hanging them upside down and maybe put a fan on them if you want to speed up the process. Swim thinks using a coffee filter and then an alcohol sieve would remove most if not all the plant materal. Swim has also read that the stronger the alchol content the stiffer the cell walls become(or something like that) thus preventing all the alkaloids from being released.

SWIM would run his fresh pods through a food processor then lay the course ground chunks spread out on a baking sheet. He would then probably keep it near a fan on
LOW setting and/or a household heat source.

timster7 added 825 Minutes and 8 Seconds later...

SWIM forgot some information. SWIYou probably doesn't want to use a coffee filter as it will literally take hours to filter some times. He would suggest some normal cotton fabric like a t-shirt, then go through a fine silk (higher thread count is better). The alcohol percentage is also not needed to be so high. More alcohol dissolves in more chlorophyll and plant oils. For the purest product SWIM would dry his pods then go through the CFO process and use that in his tincture. It may not be as quick but SWIYou will end up with a product that is much more pure and most likely more pleasant. Also once the CFO is made SWIYou doesn't have to worry about required alcohol content or oils and other junk. If SWIYou understands the problems and still wants to use just alcohol and pods, SWIM believes 20-30% will work at the lowest.

Last edited by timster7; 16-01-2011 at 09:06.
Reason: Automerged Doublepost

thanks a tonne timster, swim looked into cfo and its definitly the way to go.swim is going to make the fresh pods into CFO, then make Laudanum with the flaked opium. Swim wants the tincture to be as potent as possible obviously but swims very happy the alcohol will not have to be extremley potent (and in swims opinion, toxic).

glad to see nod & pod heads still lurking around this site. And swim's exeriment here is still underway, as a beautiful and florific summer is ahead. The unusally warm and rainy spring has done wonders for swims plants and some already have flower buds - at least what swim say. Usually swim doesn't see flowers until the 2nd or 3rd week of july so swim is quite happy indeed.

Swim has thought long and hard about the experiement and while he loves to smoke Oprah, swim simply can't spend all day searing pods like a slave, 0r so swim wishes. Swim is going to try to hang and dry the pods bur if there is a mold problem, swim will mash them and dry them on a cooking sheet with a fan. swim will try to use a lot of fresh pods in the CFO too, and once the cfo is to swims liking of consistency and filtered well, it is then added to cognac brandy. Swim already has the secondary ingrediants, like saffron, vanilla bean, nutmeg and cloves to flavour. swim is considering a small peice of mandrake root and sacred lotus stamens too, but overall, in small amounts. Swim will keep in touch

Good luck with SWIY's experiment! I have been reading a LOT on these and other forums and from what I've read/learned at this point, it seems to me that the "best" way to max potency and purity, in theory, would be as follows.

Dry pods, cut or crush open, separate out seeds (do with them as you please, just don't use for this tek). Then process the pod pieces in a blender to powder, then in a coffee grinder to FINE powder. Then, use sparing amounts of warm water while stirring, JUST ENOUGH TO RE-MOISTEN THE CPS (concentrated poppy straw) into a moist saw dust like form. Not gooey but slightly moist throughout, maybe about to the point that is will clump together when compacted like a snow ball would. You can put into a zip lock baggie over night to make sure it is all evenly moistened throughout. Then, place this into the freezer until frozen solid. This step will cause many of the cell walls to burst when frozen, thus allowing access to more goodies. Remove this from the freezer, defrost and dry it back out. Just spread it out on cookie sheet or similar with a fan for a few hours or a day, depending on temp & humidity etc. Just don’t over heat it! Keep less than 80C. Then do an alcohol extraction of your choice. (MANY tek's here, do a search, whichever one you feel comfortable with) Run through filters as best you possibly can, 1 micron filter bags, sand filter, stacked coffee filters, whatever you can best do… SWIM believes that the alcohol extraction will maximize the amount of goodies pulled out of the CPS. Of note, SWIY may want to press the mash that is left over after the alcohol extraction to get every last drop out, then repeat the alcohol extraction one last time to max extraction.

Once you have the alcohol extraction liquid, with all of the goodies in it, and have filtered it well, then evap it off and collect the CFO.

Then, to further purify, do a water extraction with the CFO you made. I.E. re-dissolve it into DH2O 6.0PH, Then do the Ice-o-lation filtering (keep the ice that you filer off as it has some goodies in it and could be ingested) and last but not least, paraffin de-fatting. SWIM should bring their current water + CFO solution to <80 C and drop in a chunk of clean, virgin, paraffin wax. Stir around for a while as the wax melts into the solution, scavenging and binding with other fats in solution… After it’s all melted and sufficiently agitated, remove from heat and let cool on counter top until the wax re-solidifies. Then, place in fridge until cold & hard. Break out the wax, pour through strainer to get the rest of the “wax floaties” then filter again through whatever type of filter you used before. Then evap as per usual (many tek’s available here) and SWIM guesses that this will be the “best” way to get the cleanest possible CFO, with max goodies with “household” items… Theoretically at least from what SWIM has read… Of course the other and most simple option is to just throw back some pod slurry or Tea and be done with it!

thanks for the great tek mainline, swim will definitly do the alcohol extraction first and then secondly with water. swim loves drinking teas but is worried about keeping pods for a long period of time due to mold and whatnot. A tincture of CFO would be the best way store it, and swim likes a drink of liquor/wine on opium. but of course, swim would like to leave a sizable portion put away for smoking sessions as well.

thanks for the great tek mainline, swim will definitely do the alcohol extraction first and then secondly with water. swim loves drinking teas but is worried about keeping pods for a long period of time due to mold and whatnot. A tincture of CFO would be the best way store it, and swim likes a drink of liquor/wine on opium. but of course, swim would like to leave a sizable portion put away for smoking sessions as well.

I think you'd be ok storring pods for long periods of time w/o mold as long as they were sufficiently dry before being stowed... could be ground up, placed into zip locks and placed into freezer too? Or just store the CFO...

From what I have read, it seems that the alcohol will extract more goodies from the plant material but also pulls out more fats, hence the second water only "cleansing" with paraffin wax & Ice-o-lation that will remove fats. I do not believe you can clean with paraffin while in alcohol solution, as the alcohol will dissolve some of the wax into solution? At least I believe that to be the case...

So, extract from pods (after freezing for cell burst) with alcohol, filter, evap. then re-dissolve with DH2O 6.0 ph <80C, defat (paraffin & Ice-o-late) then filter again and I'd guess you'd have about the best you can with household items... In theory.

I'm sorry if the answer is idiot read the posts, but I'm confused.
I recently bought one bunch of poppy plants, 3 or 4ft long, the site had 2 choices: dried, and "fresh".

I decided to order the fresh ones cuz they uh look cooler, with milk stuff inside. But what I got was a bunch of full poppy plants, pods, stem, seeds (different color than on bagel). But they were totally dry! Where does all the stuff people scrape them and harvest morphine go when they dry?

So my question is, should I just follow the post suggestions for dried poppies? I mean there's no moisture at all I don't know how they can call them fresh. anyway, thanks in advance.